“The Mermaid Parade”

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Via Pitchfork

Matthew Houck's last full-length of new songs as Phosphorescent, 2007's downcast Pride, seemed to come from the mindset of a man who was walking out into the sea and didn't know when to stop. Fitting, then, that the protagonist of "The Mermaid Parade", from new album Here's to Taking It Easy, finds himself out by the Atlantic Ocean, as far as he can get from West Coast beloved. He's not looking for some sort of Virginia Woolf-type demise, though; he just stopped by to watch the "naked women dancing" in the titular parade.

There are heavier issues at hand here than a Coney Island tradition, though-- specifically, divorce: "I came back to this city/ And you stayed home in L.A./ And our two years of marriage/ In two short weeks/ Somehow just slipped away". We get details-- beachside trysts in Mexico, airport lines, a "pretty and small" new fling matched up against an "older old man"-- and all the while the backing band produces the kind of sad-eyed country grandeur that cries so many tears in your beer that you end up drinking salt water. Goddamn it, Amanda-- goddamn it all.